GYPSYBLOOD

A while back we turned the spotlight on Chicago’s Gypsyblood, a noisy little combo with a history of in-fighting, codependency and a snazzy debut in the form of, Cold In the Guestway. Today we’re happy to report that the band is still alive and well, and what’s more, we’re pleased as punch to be premiering the video for Take Your Picture, a noisy little number that starts with an innocuous-sounding U2ish riff before taking a hard right into more abrasive, albeit still pop-friendly, territory.

Chicago’s own Gypsyblood play a FREE show TONIGHT May 16, at the Empty Bottle (9:30pm, 1035 N. Western Ave.) in support of their newly released full length LP Cold In The Guestway. We recently caught up with Gypsyblood guitarist/vocalist Adam James, and got to ask him a few questions about the record. We’ve also got a copy of the new LP to giveaway to one lucky person, so keep reading to find out how to win!

The Vinyl District: The new record just came out last month on Sargent House, what’s the meaning behind the album’s title Cold In The Guestway?

Adam James: To us, it speaks more to color and tone. When everything has lost its meaning, you can only know how you feel. The viscerality of being in a place at a moment. Like an old soul who knows their being is true when everything is telling them otherwise. When reality has been proven to be the variable within society, we are here to tell you that your being is true and Cold in the Guestway.

TVD: How’d you get hooked up with Sargent House?

Adam: We’ve been in bands playing in and around Chicago for quite sometime and along the way we’ve gotten to know some remarkably talented people. Musicians, artists, vagabonds, mercenaries, hobos, and visionaries. In saying, we’re both pretty bad at self promotion, you just do what you love and the rest will come.

So Kyle was driving around giving one of the album mixes a car test, and ran into longtime friend Dave Davison of  Maps & Atlases/Cast Spells. Dave liked what he heard and got a copy with which he sent over to Cathy and Marc at Sargent House and that was that.

The great thing about Sargent House though is that they are a genuine family. Before they make any moves on a band they spread it around the office to get everyone’s take, and if everyone’s jazzed they go with it. That kind of atmosphere has always appealed to us.

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Catch the outtakes from our Live Studio session with Gypsyblood, including the songs “Take Your Picture,” “Superstition” and “In Our Blood.” The Chicago band talks about their love/hate relationship and why creepy basement bars are just more fun.

For these and all the songs performed during our Live Studio session with Gypsyblood, stream and download DJ Maia’s full audio podcast

Chicago’s Gypsyblood know how to rock. Watch them perform “2-4-6 in the Dark” from their debut album “Cold in the Guestway” live in from the Breakthrough Radio studio.

Adam James and Kyle Victor front Gypsyblood, a band that has generated buzz (literally) for being what one blogger called “uncommonly loud.” But the band is more than just decibels, as the songs from their newly released album “Cold in the Guestway” (Sargent House) prove. Catch them live this coming May 16 in Chicago at the Empty Bottle. 

For this and all the songs performed during our Live Studio session with Gypsyblood, stream and download DJ Maia’s full audio podcast HERE

Gypsyblood - Cold In The Guestway
Sargent House
ESM Rating: 8/10

Ronnie Wood will not be pleased. The Rolling Stones guitarist and former member of The Jeff Beck Band and The Faces proudly flaunts his gypsy heritage. According to an interview with Keith’s fellow axe slinger on “Top Gear” — the British one, people — Ronnie was the first in his family to be born on land rather than on the traditional English-canal-navigating houseboat. So when a couple of dirty looking guys — vocalist/guitarist Adam James and vocalist/drummer/bassist Kyle Victor — hole up in an old Chicago building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the winter, emerging with the spring thaw as a wild noise-rock band named Gypsyblood, you might worry that Ronnie would take offense to these young tossers. Give Cold In The Guestway one listen, though, and you’ll realize that Ronnie and his gypsy relatives should welcome James and Victor with open arms.

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Sargent House does a great job promoting their bands on Twitter, and it was no different with Chicago-based Gypsyblood.  For several days, the label filled my Twitter feed with news about the band’s new release Cold in the Guestway. I was excited, then, to learn they were opening for Maps and Atlases here in DC at the Rock n Roll Hotel, since I had already read so much about them.

Before the show, I was talking with Maps’ Dave Davison backstage when Gypsyblood started playing, so the two of us ambled down the back hallway to the floor. From a distance, I knew something was different about Gypsyblood.  They were uncommonly loud.  (I’ve seen Motorhead, Sabbath, Judas Priest, and similar bands, so I know loud.) And I loved it.  Adam James, who along with Kyle Victor comprises Gypsyblood, told me later that their volume level is one criticism leveled at the band.  To which I responded: the louder the better, my man! If they come to your city, see them live.  They are a fantastic live act.

Gypsyblood draws fair comparisons to Jesus and Mary Chain. I can see that, though they are more guitar-centric. What I noticed, though, is that in the loud, multiple layers of sound, there are hooks.  There’s melody.  So while my ears may have been ringing after their set, it was a melodic ring. 

Read my interview with Gypsyblood’s Adam James below.  And don’t that image fool you; these guys are ridiculously nice.

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DOWNLOAD THEN SEE: Gypsyblood

If the year was 1991 instead of 2011 Gypsybood would be on Matador Records. Spin magazine would be creaming their pants extolling the band’s praises. Stephen Malkmus and Bob Pollard would be at their shows bobbing their heads in the back of the room. Their debut, Cold In The Guestway, is immediately familiar but never tiring. The Chicago duo of Adam James and Kyle Victor are creating music from a different age that sounds better than ever today. Download 2 tracks HERE and then catch them at their album release show at Liar’s Club  + Cast Spells tonight 4/29/11/ FREE 21+

Music makes for some twisted, codependent and abusive relationships. Lennon and McCartney. Jagger and Richards. Loggins and Messina. The list goes ever on. Longtime friends Adam James and Kyle Victor birthed Chicago’s Gypsyblood back in ‘09, not long after a huge throwdown between the two resulted in their previous project breaking up. But he swore he’d change!

Only time will tell whether or not Gypsyblood lives to record a follow up to their debut, Cold In the Guestway, so we best enjoy these boys whilst we can. Seems after the fiery duo patched things up, they set about composing a boatload of songs for their newly conceptualized white noise fest. Working alone through the Chicago winter, the duo recorded patched together Cold In the Guestway, and now we will frolic in spring with the fruits of their labor.

Well, maybe not quite frolic. Single My RKO Is MIA represents a pretty nice slice of the band’s arc-wire mojo. Warmer than Bauhaus, more gelid than JAMC, and on the same street as Factory. Dig the energy, the song’s very existence seems threatened by it own maniacal rambunctiousness, yet it manages to maintain a playfulness that encourages touching. I absolutely love this tune. Click Here to Download from MOKB

Another band we kept hearing about during last month’s South by Southwest festival was Chicago’s Gypsyblood. The bandformed in 2009 and just released their debut full-length, Cold in the Guestway, which spans a range of sounds—all raw, all rough, and all undeniably appealing. One of our favorite tracks from the album, ”In Our Blood,” is this week’s Song of the Week. Gypsyblood’s Adam James took a few minutes recently to sit down and talk with us about their sound, why Chi-town’s awesome, and getting crapped on at shows. 

Kindness of Ravens: So, alright, first thing’s first: Really awesome record. Original sound too—very raw and rough but still surprisingly melodic and catchy. Though there are seemingly some definite nods to a few bands I adored in my high school years, Jesus and Mary Chain prime among them. Were you two looking for a particular sound or is it just something that was born organically?

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The music of Chicago’s Gypsyblood has been compared to Pavement, Guided by Voices, Dinosaur Jr., Throwing Muses, Archers of Loaf and dozens of other 90′s alternative bands. To me those comparisons are flat out lazy. I’ll admit certain elements of the early to mid 90′s (sludgy guitar riffs, strained vocals, brooding lyrics) vaguely hover around Gypsyblood’s latest LP Cold in the Guestway; but like musical gnats, hovering is as close as they come to picking an obvious reference to land on.

Often 90′s rock isn’t a touchstone at all, one could just as easily find bits of 80′s punk, 60′s psychedelia and 70′s glam in standout tracks “My R.K.O. is M.I.A.” and “Take Your Picture”. Jesus and Mary Chain, who I would consider more of an 80′s band, is a more valid comparison often cited, especially on a track like “A Song Called Take 2″, given the shared vocals and general noisy ethos. Only in a recent interview frontmen Adam James and Kyle Victor claimed they had not heard Jesus and Mary Chain until the comparison was made in the press. Whether or not that is true doesn’t matter because wearing your influences on your sleeve is nothing new to pop music. After all, Jesus and Mary Chain were reinterpreting the Beach Boys and The Stooges, Pavement did the same with The Fall and Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. loved them some Neil Young and Wipers.

What matters in the end is not necessarily the originality of the band’s aesthetic but the ability of that aesthetic to stir up something unique in the listener. Something Gypsyblood’s Cold in the Guestway achieves with their hazy, ragged but nonetheless hook-heavy approach to classic pop.

Cold in the Guestway is streaming now on Gypsyblood’s bandcamp

Gypsyblood will be celebrating the release of their debut album Cold In The Guestway with a hometown Chicago show on April 29th. Yes, we know its two weeks after it comes out but we are doing a mini tour first with Maps & Atlases & Delicate Steve. And who better to join us than the man who brought Gypsyblood to Sargent House,  Dave Davison, Mr. A&R himself will be playing his own Cast Spells on this fine evening at the Liars Club. Don’t miss it Chicago.

(Source: artistdata.sonicbids.com)

Chicago is, in my humble opinion, one of the best cities for truly creative work. Granted, I am bias since it’s where I call my home, and also where I’m involved in the arts, but when it comes solid music, theater, and art, Chicago is where it’s at. Other cities have a lot of creative people doing creative things, but Chicago artists seem to still have a strong foothold in reality. There’s a difference between being artistic and jerking off. As far as I have seen, folks here know when to put the Vaseline away.

Case in point, Chicago’s own Gypsyblood. It would be very easy for these gentlemen to take their noisy and fuzzy intensity to a sonic extreme just for the thrill of making the audience think they are “deep” and making everyone shift in their seats. Instead, Gypsyblood pushes out some damn fine dance tunes and melodies from the fuzz. Their debut album, Cold in the Guestway, is a tight amalgamation of influences with a sprinkle of Chicago punk grime.

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It’s a good time to be making crunchy, guitar-driven music that sounds like 90s alt-rock. The ever-churning pop-cultural nostalgia machine is almost finished with 90s rave culture, and lately Doc Martens and flannels have been trendier than at any point in the past 15 years or so. Two of the most anticipated releases of the past couple months, Yuck’s self-titled debut album and Dum Dum Girls’ He Gets Me High EP, wouldn’t have sounded odd to anybody in 1992, when there were lots of other bands chasing the coattails of Dinosaur Jr. or late-period Throwing Muses.

So it’s probably also a good time for Gypsyblood’s Cold in the Guestway, which comes out next week on Sargent House (home to fellow Chicagoans Russian Circles and Cast Spells). It’s packed with what seem like nods to the fuzz-addicted indie rockers of a generation ago—Dinosaur, Archers of Loaf—but the band claim to have arrived at their sound without any conscious influence from those acts.

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